1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as an electrophotographic copier or printer and particularly to an image forming apparatus including a charge roll for charging a surface of an image carrier driven for rotation and a cleaning member for this charge roll.
2. Related Art
In a charging device of a contact charge type, a charge roll is always in contact with or extremely close to an image carrier and therefore a surface of the charge roll is likely to get dirty due to adhesion of foreign matters. Although the surface of the image carrier repeatedly carrying out image forming operation enters an area for a charging process after going through a cleaning process for removing foreign matters such as residual toner after the transfer on a downstream side of a transfer process, particles smaller than the toner, such as a part of the toner or an additive of the toner or the like, remain on the image carried without being cleaned even after the cleaning process and adhere to the surface of the charge roll. The foreign matters that has adhered to the surface of the charge roll causes nonuniformity in surface resistance of the charge roll, which causes abnormal discharge or unstable discharge to thereby deteriorate charge uniformity.